Ohioans For Concealed Carry Discussion Forums

Last week I conducted a training day for a police department. The department explained what they wanted to do and we made it happen in a safe, realistic, relevant manner. This drill is about "getting off the X" (movement), staying orientated with the threat, safe and proficient weapons handling, engaging the threat until it is no longer a threat and much more. Officers were only allowed to have three, four round magazines so we could see what the reload looked like when it matters. Officers were never more than 8 feet away from the target and sometime as close as 1 foot. Sound easy? Every officer except for one had at least one miss. The misses were not horrible but they still missed and in the end the drill proved to be a great evaluation for each officer.

Our website About page says the following:
Apex Shooting and Tactics LLC is deeply rooted in a method of training that is safe, effective, relevant, and encourages a continuous thought process that will demand accountability. Safe and effective techniques, tactics and procedures are the foundation of our student learning objectives. Escalation of training and intensity will vary depending on number of students and their skill levels, though the core of the course will always remain the same.

This drill is not for everyone. Every officer who went through the drill showed some deficiency in fundamentals of marksmanship, weapons handling or tactics. That is what training is about, building skills, identifying weak points and then fixing them.

Here is body cam video from one officer.
https://youtu.be/SpwCDluhZQw

That reads easy - but it looks very, very hard.

Under that type of up-close pressure, I'm sure that there will be fundamental flaws exposed for most, myself included!

Something that really made sense to me was the late Louis Awerbuck's reasoning for why good shooters miss at close range, when under intense pressure. He attributes part of the marksmanship problem to "the law of inverse proportions," that up-close, even minimal displacement of the target can result in a huge shift in where the shot needs to be tracked/aimed. This line of logic also doesn't just stop on the examination of why good shooters completely miss in close-range encounters, but also has further implications in terms of shot placement -particularly as the target's vitals shift in presentation in three dimensions- and even backstop/background concerns.